Wed May 13 14:11:31 PDT 2015

Balancing Perspectives

I don't pay all that much attention to politics. My thinking is
that it is overly simplistic to try to divide all possible policy
issues into two groups, and then simply select the preferred group
as your purveyor of all desirable results. So, I tend to prefer the
'left' perspective on some issues and the 'right' perspective on
others.

I also tend to prefer to keep matters to be based on facts. As
do scientists and historians - the reasonable ones at least.
Recently I have been tending to read two particular 'cultural
historians' for their perspectives on recent political
developments. My theory is that these historians should at least
get the facts straight.

Representing the left is Alwyn W. Turner, who claims to have
accurately predicted the recent UK electoral outcome. Alwyn writes
a great deal about the recent history of the UK, using his
encyclopedic knowledge of popular cultural at every turn. His
recent writings on the UK general election have been very
entertaining ('...or that bloke up in Scotland, whose constituency
is so remote that not even SNP canvassers could find it.') and
provide great insights into the defeat of the Labour party.

And representing the right is Mark Steyn, who claims to defend
free speech, and the right to poke fun at climate scientists.
Mark's knowledge of music and musicals is encyclopedic, and even if
you don't much care for Broadway, after reading a witty 10,000 word
essay on Mark's blog, you will have a passing acquaintence with the
historical emergence some obscure numbers, and will be able amaze
your friends by describing the song's lyricist, composer, and the
various perfomers who have covered the song through the ages.

Turner and Steyn poke fun at their own political favorites.
Turner called out the Labour party for fascillitating male/female
segregated
meetings, and Steyn does not suffer the right's slip-ups gladly
(see for example the folding expertise of the republicans dealt
with
here.

Their similarities caused me to wonder if it might not be
possible to find similar left/right writer pairings with additional
interests and then set up a pages of links providing access to the
left and righ opinion on issues. It is straightforward to find
biased sites these days - everyone who attended journalism school
seems to have forgotten about reporting the facts - but I wonder if
there is an interest in a site which attempts to collect the
balance of perspectives?